Collaborative design process of large-scale engineering systems using the axiomatic design approach

The complexity of engineering systems is rapidly increasing because the number of components has increased and various engineering disciplines are involved. According to this trend, large-scale engineering systems are designed by multiple design teams with many designers of various disciplines. Although the design process by the design teams is a great deal similar to the design process by an individual designer, there is an important difference between them. Designing a large-scale engineering system with design teams can cause potential conflict among the subsystems because each team may design a subsystem without considering the other team’s subsystems. In this article, a collaborative design process is proposed to design a large-scale engineering system efficiently without the conflict among the subsystems using the Independence Axiom of axiomatic design. The proposed process uses a zigzagging process between the functional domain and the physical domain, and the online electric vehicle (OLEV) is designed by the proposed process. The OLEV is an electric vehicle which uses electric power transmitted wirelessly from the power source buried in the road. The functional requirements (FRs) and constraints of the OLEV are specified to clarify the design objectives and specifications. The prototype, which is designed by the design teams based on the defined FRs, is evaluated using the proposed process. It is found that the proposed process can lead design teams to design a product more efficiently without unnecessary iterations.